Feeling and thinking in Psalms 18 and 19: A tale of two revivals
Prayer is often the topic of the Psalms. There is hardly a Psalm that is not a prayer or a praise or a cry to God. Whether it is a jubilant exultation of victory and celebration of the wonders of God's creation, power and glory or it is a desperate cry for help, all the Psalms in one way or another are testimonies of relationship with God.
God has been talking to me my whole life. There is not a time in my life where I can’t remember God talking to me. I am not saying I was listening, obeying or following my whole life. But I can see, looking back, that God has always been present.
Psalms 18 and 19 are two of the most important Psalms in God’s voice in my head. God used Psalm 19 to speak to me of His power, grandeur, holiness and requirement of obedience.
I love walking at night and I love looking at the stars. It is no surprise to me that my own father’s testimony begins with a prayer under the stars sitting at night in a field. These days I look to Orion or other stars like the Pleiades and I feel like God is using them to keep an eye on me and to comfort me. I am not saying I worship the stars, I just see the glory of God in His creation.
I grew up in rural Michigan and I had no idea how blessed we were with a wonderful night sky. So far from urban populations in sparsely populated farming country, we were blessed with regular sightings of shooting stars, the northern lights and wonderful views of the Milky Way. I would walk in all the seasons on clear nights and look up, lay on my back and look up, sing at the top of my lungs and look up, and see the glory of God. I knew that I could count on the stars as guides in the night and the path of the sun as a guide in the day. I grew up in a place where everyone knew where north was, how to find the big dipper or big bear star constellation. Somehow cloudy days, blowing snow and freezing rain didn’t blot out the memory that there were stars in the sky and they soon would be visible once again. I grew up where the sky was a constant friend. We’d look up at the clouds in the summer and see shapes of things, where the blue of the sky was a good match for the blue of the lake water in front of my home or the Great Lakes surrounding my state. All this, I think, even as much as the surrounding Christian culture, spoke to my soul of a greater reality. So I was primed by creation to see in the skies a great God.
When I first gave my life to Jesus it was Psalm 19 that laid two extremely important foundation stones for my faith.
One is the Lordship of God. He is master, He is creator, He is above all things. His glory and majesty know no boundaries, and the very stars in heaven speak to us all everywhere of His glory. I was convinced and I have always since that time been convinced of this fact, and the stars and all that I learn about cosmology and astronomy only convince me more and more of this fact. I am not alone in this. Many people throughout the ages have seen God’s greatness and majesty and personal care through looking at the stars.
I clearly remember walking under the stars as a young teenager with a group of young people not much younger than me, confidently quoting Psalm 19 as one of my first Bible studies given to a group. If you can see the stars and someone reads Psalms 19 you can’t help but wonder at the greatness and vastness of God.
But the Psalm goes on to be highly personal. It was the last two verses of Psalm 19 that I prayed as a mantra. I felt sinful. I was sinful. I was full of lust, pride, lack of faith, greed and evil thoughts; I knew it. I had so much anger in me and I would have heartlessly killed another human if I could have. I hated this in me. I hated my sexually perverted desires and the propensity to want in my heart to trap someone in a passionate, fleshly relationship. I was selfish and willing to use people to get what I wanted. Oh I could fake. I could pretend. But I knew what was in my heart and I hated it. I loathed my love of sin and I found my propensity to callously use people for my own gratification repugnant. I would pray earnestly to God. I wasn’t so much a disciplined prayer time but rather a cry of desperation.
12 How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart?
Cleanse me from these hidden faults.
13 Keep your servant from deliberate sins!
Don’t let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin.
14 May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
These words were powerful to my heart. I was begging God to help me. I was afraid of the murder, the addiction and the recklessness of passion that would land me in big trouble. I remain acutely aware to this day of the grace of God and His overwhelming love for me. He rescued me and like the angel with the sword before Balaam and his donkey, God has kept me from sin. Oh I have sinned to be sure. I have brought pain to myself and hurt many people through the years. I have fallen into pits of sin and done terrible things. But I would have done so much more and worse things, I tried to do things, I planned to do things but God answered the prayer of my youth and He kept me from doing the evil I had planned. I am so thankful. And He has often filled my mouth and heart with praise. He has made a fountain of praise to be a recurring fountain of life. I would be slipping into a bleak, sinful depression and lustful and angry time in my life, and a praise song would capture my heart and lift me out of the pit of despair.
Psalm 19 has been used by God so often for over 40 years to teach me, correct me and inspire me to be holy and to rely on God and to worship God and to want to be pleasing to God. You may be reading this and recoil. But let me ask you what would have been better? Should I have given into my selfish passions tat would rape and kill to satisfy myself? Should I have found self discipline in a society that had no patience for me, my ADHD, my loud, ridiculous, undisciplined craziness? The world would have let me become a burnout, a druggy, a prisoner, a fugitive, a victim of suicide or a vegetable on drugs and antidepresents. The world, the schools and even the church had little time or patience for the real struggle going on inside me. But I knew God did. God loved me. I was sure of it. God changed people. I had seen it and I wanted it for me. I still to this day feel the passion of emotion in Psalm 19. But I never felt worthy. So in some ways Psalm 19 was my first revival. After I was born again, soon on the heels of this high I needed a filing of the Spirit of God and I needed to worship and to see God as high and lifted up and as next to me, showing me the way of holiness. Psalm 19 sparked a flame that has flickered and fluttered and spit and sputtered but never fully went out, and I fanned to flame my faith throughout my life with the words of David from Psalm 19.
Then God brought me Psalm 18.
I was studying at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, surrounded by the lights in a city that never sleeps, a world of riches, poverty, prostitution and gang violence. It was a cocktail fueled by fleshly passions. I was walking by works and falling all the time. I wanted to be holy but failed daily. The young hispanic culture I lived in in west Chicago and the extremely rich neighbourhoods and office buildings around Moody where I was a delivery person brought me face to face with the beauty, passion and wealth of this world that was fueling my depravity. I could not keep myself in check. I continually felt like a fraud and a disappointment to God.
I was married but not caring well for my wife. I was reeling from the death of my brother when God dropped a bomb on me in the middle of my failure and depression and depravity. God delights in me. I must admit I didn’t, until long after that day, begin to intellectually understand the meaning of the beginning of the chapter in Psalms 18. I was in a fog and I heard a bunch of emotional and fiery blah blah blah, but it led up to this mountain top clarity above the clouds. I was standing alone with God high at the top of a mountain and there God poured out His delight in me.
A baby can’t obey, a newborn baby can’t reason or rationalise or put any conscious effort into the relationship with his parents. A newborn baby is a selfish, stinky, messy, demanding burden. It contributes nothing but tiredness, cost, and stress. And yet. Parents delight in their children. They love them. They carry them, care for them, feed them, hold them, play with them, nurture them. The smallest step of unplanned progress delights the parent. I understood. I was God’s child. I was His baby. And He wouldn’t kick me for not walking at 4 months old nor would He scold me for being a child who couldn't work like an adult. He made me. He had patience with me. He delighted in me. Oh I was free. I could fly. The burdens rolled away. I was cared for and I was delighted in by a God who showed intense love and gentleness. I have since, through the years, come to understand God coming to my rescue. God heard my cry even when I could not understand or properly articulate that cry myself. Even the Holy Spirit was praying for me and the Son was interceding for me and the Father owned my eyes and I could see His delight in me. I wanted everyone to know. I was God’s child and He delighted in me. Oh I was giddy with joy. I was free of the burden. I could obey out of love and know His response was love. I could fall and I knew God was there to help me. He knew I was weak and He was quick to forgive and to wash me off and set me back on my feet.
So these were the foundations of my faith in two chapters of the Bible.
God is amazing and He creates a world that fills me with awe and wonder.
But God is close to me and will help me be holy. He will help me out of the pit of sin. He will protect me from sin. He will make me pleasing to Himself. He will be my rock and my redeemer.
And in my life I will fail and I will struggle with sin and the enemy will nearly overwhelm me, but my God delights in me. He rescues me and makes me clean and holy because I am His child and He delights in me.
I have had many other revivals in my life since those times and most have been fueled by something in God’s Word, the Bible. And I could go on about Psalm 23 and Psalm 2 and Psalm 1 and Psalm 42…. Each is a personal story of God speaking to my heart through His word and changing me and drawing me to Himself.
It really is true: sin will keep you from the Bible and the Bible will keep you from sin. God and His Word (written and living) will stop you from the self-destructive, hateful path of sin. But you will find it a constant struggle because the cares of this world and your passions and weaknesses will fight to keep you from God’s Word. But God is greater. Call out to Him and pray the prayer of David in Psalm 19. I have prayed this prayer for over 40 years and never found it to fail; sooner or later God will show you all He is immediately doing to answer your prayer. Just pray with all your heart and don’t give up praying.
Keep your servant from deliberate sins!
Don’t let them control me.
Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin.
May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
NLT
Keep cleansing me, God,
and keep me from my secret, selfish sins;
may they never rule over me!
For only then will I be free from fault
and remain innocent of rebellion.
So may the words of my mouth, my meditation-thoughts,
and every movement of my heart be always pure and pleasing,
acceptable before your eyes, Yahweh,
my only Redeemer, my Protector.
TPT
William Blake (1757–1827)
1826 Museum of the Shenandoah Valley
Comments
Post a Comment